Mary Duncan

DUNCAN, Mary (née Lundie). b. Kelso, 26 April 1814; d. Cleish, Kinross-shire, 5 January 1840. She was the daughter of the minister of Kelso. She married William Wallace Duncan, minister of Cleish, in 1836. Her hymns were written for her own children during the last year of her tragically short life. The best known, which was found in many books until the 1960s, was ‘An Evening Prayer’, beginning ‘Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me’*. Her life was commemorated in a memoir written by her mother, Mary Lundie, entitled Memoir of Mrs. W.W. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1841), a book that became very popular, reaching its Eighth Edition in 1848. Her hymns were published in the Memoir and also separately as...